Sifted Words — no-knead breads

March 9, 2010

I promise, a new recipe is on the rise! (I really stretched for that one, I know) While you continue to salivate, I thought I’d add in another little feature to my blog. This time I’m writing about someone else’s writing, meaning I’m highlighting an article, link, post — whatever — that I found that has something to do with bread (and happens to be interesting… sometimes bread can be quite boring, and I promise to spare you the agony of those instances).

Elliott recently picked up the February issue of “Vegetarian Times” from the library, primarily to try new meat-free recipes for our dwindling diet. In the midst of recipes for “Roasted Vegetable Linguine With Torn Fresh Basil” and “Feta-stuffed Peppadews” was an article for no-knead breads. I was not only captivated by the delicious photos of several recipes for no-knead bread (which I won’t give away because I may or may not be baking one soon) but intrigued, also, by the quip that no-knead bread came along well before the breads we know today, which sometimes require a hefty dose of back-cracking kneading.

According to the article, aptly titled “No-Knead Breads,” “no-knead bread was how people made bread thousands of years ago — before they discovered that by pulling, beating, stretching, stirring or otherwise ‘kneading’ wheat doughs they could speed up the gluten-developing process.” Apparently, a 2006 recipe in the New York Times spurred a renewed interest in no-knead breads. Who knew?

So why did we choose to put more work into the process of baking bread if it was so much simpler in the first place? Impatience, perhaps? Understandable, but I’m much more attracted to the idea of saving my arms from becoming gelatinous if I have to wait an extra few hours for delicious bread.

Be on the lookout for a new recipe very soon, my friends. I promise I won’t let you down! In the meantime, check out some no-knead breads I’ve already posted.